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Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

theguardian.com

321–330 of 713 posts

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#321

I've never understood the illiberal desire to treat boys and girls so differently. I'm glad I live in a country where sexism is illegal at a fundamental level -- this kind of law would be quickly struck down.

> I've never understood the illiberal desire to treat boys and girls so differently. I'm glad I live in a country where sexism is illegal at a fundamental level -- this kind of law would be quickly struck down.

Which country would that be? Unless you are from a select few Norther European countries your military enlistment/draft laws are likely quite sexist.

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moment you abandon any attempt to correct the behavior you guarantee they are “lost” to society.

The other kids will have to suffer so the misbehaving kids can be saved, but that's a sacrifice we're willing to make!

The cases where the bully is truly irredeemable are few and far between. Most of the time the adults just abandon too quickly. Especially in school where teachers are stretched thin and have no “blood duty” to the child.

But more importantly, children who are abandoned “to save others’ suffering” grow up to be adults who can and will cause even more suffering. Education and care are like a debt, if you don’t service it early eventually everyone pays with interest.

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#324

The only effective punishment/threat that I saw work on my bullies at school was the threat to remove one of them from the football team and prevent him from playing for the school. He turned it around and was ok after that. It was highly effective because it was a bigger punishment than those used for not doing your homework, and because it was highly relevant to him specifically. It worked because we had 16 student…

Some of the generic policies can be very strange, too.

I once got detention for getting punched in the arm. I was much taller than any of the school bullies, so they mostly didn't start anything with me. But every now and then, they would try. The punch barely hurt and I didn't really care, but another student saw it and reported it. The staff knew what happened, understood that I was the only one that got hit, and then gave us both detention. I couldn't believe it. That angered me 100x more than the bully. Looking back, I assume this policy was intended to deal with cases where it's unclear who hit who or who started it. But I became fixated on how unfair it was. If they wanted to create another troublemaker, they almost succeeded.

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullies need to be identified as simply immature, treated as children that have not graduated to their age. That really impacts the individual. Make them wear identifying clothing as a "special case" and they will mature very fast.

As someone who was once a child and witnessed other kids getting bullied, bullies loved getting singled out. They thrived on attention. There are kids who'd punch another kid if it meant they'd get an ugly shirt that everyone would recognize and mark them as "bad"

"Bad" is a cool label, it marks you as dangerous. But the comment proposes "immature", "behind". So give then a neat, pink shirt, not a black one with a skull on it (not saying that this works either, just clarifying).

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#327

On this same topic, Texas leads the US in paddling! > Spanking has greatly decreased in elementary schools but increased at high schools, especially in non-urban districts. > Between 2010 and 2025, over 180 high schools reintroduced paddling —- often justified as an alternative to out-of-school or in-school suspension. https://www.corpun.com/rtsd.htm

I googled this and I didn't even have to scroll the search results before I found an article about a perverted teacher abusing a teenager this way.

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#328

I've never understood the illiberal desire to treat boys and girls so differently. I'm glad I live in a country where sexism is illegal at a fundamental level -- this kind of law would be quickly struck down.

[dead]

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You expel them and they become another person's problem. I heard recently of a local problem child aged seven. He's already been expelled from a private school but has entered a state school where he seriously injured another pupil and attempted to strangle one of the teachers. Expulsion isn't going to reform them, it will just move it on elsewhere.

So directly to prison. Or must they succeed first?

I can't tell if you're being deliberately obtuse / sarcastic, but even aside from the ethical considerations here, prison is an insanely expensive way of dealing with the issue.

In the US in 2010, cost per inmate per year in a state prison ranges between $14,603 (Kentucky) and $60,076 (New York), and averages at $31,286. That's 16 years ago, so it'll be higher now. In the UK it was an average of £32,315 in 2020-21. You might as well employ an individual case worker, and the societal outcomes would be a hell of lot better.

Re: Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school

#330

People wonder why the state of the world is the way it is. Traumatized child expresses themselves the only way they know how? Let's beat them, surely this is the solution not creating a safe environment. The cycle continues.

Haven't you heard? Not beating children is woke. Also violence is the only way to a high trust society.
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